Hey, look, I actually finished something! (And some MMM stuff)

I haven't had a chance to write in the last few days, so I'm going to do days 9-12 all at once. But slightly out of order, because day 10 features my latest project, and we all know that's the most interesting thing I have to talk about, right? Right. So now that that's out of the way, here's....

Day 10:
Top: Me-made, blogged below!
Jeans: Express, via thrift store
Shoes: J.Renee
Necklace/earrings: Me-made, blogged below. 

I made this top from the blouse pattern in the BurdaStyle Sewing Handbook--the first project I've made from there since the coat I made for the publication. Aside from re-drafting the sleeves and leaving off the ribbon trim, I made this pretty much as is, though I had to taper down the sides an extra 5/8" to where the waist seam split. (I'm mainly writing that so I remember to alter the pattern.) Finishing this off took me more or less literally all day on Wednesday. My plan was to finish this and then watch part 3 of the Jean-ius course so I could move forward on my jeans, but after I tallied it all up, this took me about 7 hours to finish up. I'm not sure how--it's not like I was goofing off! Must have been all that seam finishing. And the sleeve hems took me awhile to figure out, including some unpicking.

 And another gratuitous shot--though I know the sun makes this not the best view of the shirt, or the most flattering view of my face, you can see the necklace a bit better here. And look how red my hair looks! (Ok, I'll admit it, that's my main reasoning for posting this one. I like pictures where my hair looks really, really red!)

Things I learned from this project:

1. My pattern-altering skills need work. I was going for more of a flutter sleeve and I wanted a non-gathered sleeve, but I think I didn't take enough off the top to smooth the cap out, and I didn't add enough flare to the bottom. Plus it's way too long to have worked as that style. I think the bell kind of works fine, but still not what I'd originally pictured.
   
   
2. When adding seam allowances myself, I should probably read ahead in the directions first to see where I might need to allow more. The waist drawstring casing would have worked so much better if I hadn't had to make it so narrow.
3. Partially bias-cut peplums are HARD to hem flat! I had to occasionally take a tiny tuck in the hem to get rid of the extra fabric. It was fine since it's polyester, but if I'd made this out of cotton, I'd be worried about it showing through the front after pressing.
4. Even though I feel like this shirt took me much longer than it should have, I'm really glad I took the time to finish each seam. This fabric frayed like crazy, and it probably would fall apart within a few washes if I hadn't. Actually, I'm still a bit concerned about it, to be honest.
5. Sewing the sleeves in flat is good. But I still should have hemmed them with the bias strip in the round, because I would have saved myself a lot of trouble and they would have matched up better in the end. (One edge was slightly longer than the other, and I didn't know until the bias strip was already sewed on, aka too late.
6. I should probably also make the slit a little longer next time. I don't know if I have an exceptionally large head or what, but this was just a liiiiiiiittle bit hard to pull over!  (See above, since I can't get the pictures to cooperate.)

All in all, though there are things that could have gone better, I think this blouse was a great learning experience. And since the entire point of the book is altering and manipulating patterns to make the design really your own, I think it was a successful step in that direction for me. Now I just need to come up with a good name for this, since I'm a dork like that--I'm a bit torn, since the print looks kind of vine-like when close up, but from a distance, it makes me think of a computer matrix. I'm currently leaning towards the latter, since the whole "zeroes and ones" thing makes me think of an Andrew Bird song by that title.

And before I leave day 10 completely, here's a closer-up view of the jewelry:

I think this one also pre-dated the blog. I somehow got my hands on these purpleish freshwater pearl beads, and in playing with those oblong ones, came up with this flower pendant. So I ran with it.

Now for a little skipping back and forth in time!

Day 9:
Top: Me-reconstructed--a thrifted dress that I chopped into a top, along with some altering at the shoulders
Shrug: Me-reconstructed, blogged here
Trouser Jeans: Worthington, I think from JCPenney's
Shoes: Array
Earrings: See below

This was my sewing marathon day, so I wanted a top that was fitted enough that I could easily throw the blouse over top to check the fit. This fit the bill well. Not my best shot expression-wise, but it shows the outfit the best, so let's just pretend this is my model shot, ok? I also discovered that these pants are not too short for me when worn with flats--they just look terrible with my boots.

And the earrings--another craft fair leftover, but with the two-tone effect that makes them not sure if they're blue or green, depending on the lighting (as illustrated here), they worked pretty well with this top!

Day 11:
Top: The "Doolittle" blouse, blogged here
Pants: Apt.9, and the only store-bought pants I have that still fit and flatter like a dream.
Shoes: Hotter
Earrings: See below

I was strongly considering changing into jeans after teaching lessons, but didn't. In retrospect, I probably should have, since my boyfriend and I were hanging out at his place, and these pants didn't fare too well against the fur of two golden retrievers! But the truth is that I really only have two pairs of jeans that are ok for outside-of-work wearing right now, since my best-fitting pair are out of commission until I finish the next step or two of the Jean-ius class and can take all of that hand-basting out. I wore the one pair the day before, and skinny jeans with a top this fitted is not my thing. So I stuck with this again.

The earrings were something a bit different for me. Usually, I try to match my jewelry colors to the colors in my outfit. I decided to play around with contrasting. Once again, these earrings are craft fair leftovers--actually, one of the few things that came back to me after I'd let my mom, my sis-in-law, and several of my friends at the stash. Poor, unloved earrings. And if blue and gold is good enough for my old university, it should work, right? I think this would have worked a bit better if I'd had another yellow accessory to go with it, like a bracelet or a pair of shoes or something, but it was kind of fun to go outside the box.

And finally, yesterday:

Day 12:
Top: The Sorbetto formerly known as Azalea, blogged here
Jeans: The same ratty thrifted Old Navy ones I wore to work
Sandals: J.Renee
Earrings: I forgot to take a close-up pic, but they're me-made with light blue swirly beads.

I didn't have a lot of time to throw an outfit together, since I ended up with a spontaneous family outing shortly after I got home from work, and then spent the evening hanging out with two of my really good friends. I grabbed this one on a whim, since it was warmer today and I hadn't actually worn it in public yet, despite making it months and months ago--I figured I needed to give it a shot! And looking at this picture, I'm warming up a bit to the Sorbetto pattern-- I'd thought it would be horribly unflattering on me, since it's not fitted at the waist like I usually go for, but it doesn't look too bad in this shot. (Still needs to be a little longer on me though, I think. Just enough that I can raise my arms without flashing midriff. And I'll probably ditch the pleat if I make it again.) It was really comfortable to wear, though, which is great for a weekend top!

I'll do today's outfit in another post-- truthfully, I haven't even put on any accessories yet, since catching up on outfit pics was a higher priority for now, so I'll have to get that picture later!

It's finally here!

Look what I got in the mail today!

I've been seeing a lot about this book lately in the blogosphere (particularly this week's theme at The Sew Weekly), and have been anxiously awaiting my own copy. So I was really excited to see the big box with my name on it! I haven't had a chance to read through the entire thing yet, but I really do like the look of the three patterns I hadn't seen yet! (I only saw the bag and coat, since those were the ones they chose for my sketch submissions.) And you can bet I'll be reading this one cover to cover.

The other thing I was really excited to get back in the mail was my jacket! If you have the book, you can see it on the bottom right-hand corner of page 168. But I thought it would be fun to show some of the details that didn't make it into the book. (I hope that's ok, BurdaStyle! I know I'm about a year behind on actually posting my projects to your site, but I promise I'll start catching up on that soon!)

I really like the way the sleeve pleats turned out. I added a couple extra to distribute the fullness, because the suedecloth was NOT a gather-friendly fabric. It's a little hard to see in both here and the book, but there's actually a self-fabric trim over the princess seam-- two parallel bias-type strips.  And of course, fabric-covered buttons!

(Please ignore the freaky orange alien hand.) The buttons are basically just a detail to cover the snap closure-- just like with my floral fantasy jacket, this fabric wasn't really conducive to buttonholes either.

I kind of really love the lining fabric. The fabric is right on the cusp of both blue and grey, and somehow, the background of this brocade goes with it perfectly. (And the blue swirls are just fun....you know how I feel about solid pieces and print linings!)

Overall, and particularly due to the color, this jacket feels kind of like a modern Alice in Wonderland to me-- as in Alice in the more recent Johnny Depp adaptation, when she's back in the "real world" and her somewhat Victorian style.  Like this coat. I'm excited that I'll finally have a chance to wear this jacket... and if I end up having to make the skirt or dress pattern from this book to go with it, since this is also a bit out of my usual color scheme, well, so be it. Oh, darn.

Thanks again for allowing me to be a part of this, BurdaStyle--it was truly an honor!

A deceptively complicated refashion

Recently over at Refashion Co-Op, the editors decided it would be fun to occasionally have community challenges based on a certain theme. The first one is going on this week, and the theme is lace. Now, I've said it before, but I'll repeat myself: I'm generally not a lace girl. But I did have a top on hand that fit the bill that I've been meaning to work on anyway, so it was a good time to join in on the fun!

Here's the original top, as modeled by Donna. An all-over stretch lace, kind of peasanty top that I picked up at the thrift store one day. My thought was that it would make a nice layering top, being in a rather neutral color. But it had some issues.

Namely being that the thing was rather big on me. I'm wearing it over another top here, and the only thing keeping it from falling off of my shoulders is that I'm holding my arm up to do the mirror shot thing. Which made it annoying to wear even layered over a camisole, since the straps were always showing.

My original thought was to resize and fully line it, so I could eliminate the camisole altogether. Which made this a deceptively complicated thing to refashion, since I had to almost entirely deconstruct it first!  I basically just used the original pieces as a pattern and lined it with some jersey knit. (The leftover remnant pieces from this top, to be precise, though I used the wrong side for the coloring.)

I realized partway through that I had no idea how to reattach the peasanty sleeves for it to still work, so I ended up making this into a camisole. Adding the lining was probably a waste of time due to this, since in order for the bust seam to sit right, I'd have to wear another one underneath (it's loooooow by my standards!) Though it might be ok to wear it a bit higher under another shirt.

I do like how the straps turned out, though. I basically just took a scrap of the jersey and a scrap of the lace and sandwiched it around a piece of regular old elastic, then zig-zagged it while I stretched it.

Since I used one sleeve to make the straps, I had one sleeve left over. So I squared up the ends, serged it into a tube, and sewed the ends onto another piece of elastic...

...to make a headband! The fabric is stretchy enough that I think I'll be able to avoid my usual headband issue. (They tend to squeeze behind my ears and make me end up with a headache.) And it's a neutral enough color that I'll probably get some good use out of it!

So since I did all of this (minus the deconstructing) yesterday, I guess I can say that Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday is back!

On a few random notes:

• 
  It's good to see Project Runway back! Despite my annoyance last season at Gretchen winning, and my annoyance in the first episode for cutting one of the ladies whose style I liked so far in favor of the one who was putting everyone down right from the start, I've been enjoying it so far. (I'm not-so-secretly rooting for Anya, despite her lack of sewing experience, because I actually know someone who knows her! One of my friends from church grew up in Trinidad and went to school with her!)
• I think I need this pattern. Seriously. This is the coolest knit dress pattern I've seen in awhile, and I have a piece of fabric in the stash that I think is the perfect amount to make it. Therefore, I need this pattern to bust my stash. So there.
• Several of you probably know this already, but the BurdaStyle book release date is up! As is a picture of the cover on Amazon. (It's hard to tell from the size of the picture, even when enlarging....but I'm pretty sure the jacket third from the left in the bottom row is mine!) That reminds me, I really need to get my studio page over there updated...

The BurdaStyle Book Project, part 4: The End

That's right... I finished it this morning. (Around 1 AM.) And it will be shipped out this afternoon after work.

I'm having mixed feelings on the finished product, honestly-- I like the styling of it, but I'm feeling somewhat like perhaps it wasn't the best pairing of fabric to pattern. Things aren't lying as smoothly as I'd like them to, at least on my sewing dummy. (I took a few photos for my own personal reference, though I can't post them here for copyright reasons.) And with the bottom part of the coat, it's not quite laying right with the lining either-- it's like the faux suede has just enough stretch and drape that it's distorting when paired with the strictly-woven brocade lining. But there's nothing I can do about it-- I pretty much have to ship it today. And I've already put hours into this coat.

I'll just have to trust that I'm being too overly critical of my own work, and hope that it's what they're looking for.

I'll probably be posting again soon-- I have a finished dress that I hadn't posted yet from before when I started the coat (though I hand-finished the lining in the midst of this), and I finally made the final pieces for my "elements" jewelry project. In the meantime, I'm probably going to spend my workday plotting fall sewing-- I have a bin full of fabric and pattern pairings, and an already-cut muslin sitting on my machine for a blouse from a Burda magazine. So I'm thinking that might be the project of the day-- just need to get it fitted enough to see how it will work with the plaid I have in mind for it. And since it's a muslin, I don't care if it's perfectly stitched.

The BurdaStyle Book Project, part 3: Moving right along...

My plan all along for today was to pretty much sew all day and get as much knocked out as possible. I didn't have much time at all to sew this week, except for Thursday night, which was when I stitched down that trim. This is how my sleeve turned out, and I think it's pretty good! Except that I forgot to check which way the crossovers were going--so they're the same on both sleeves except for mirror images like they probably should have been. Oh well.... I decided that leaving it would be the best thing, because ripping it off and starting over on the one sleeve would likely ruin it, and as long as it took me to iron that blasted bias tape and get it taped on, I didn't want to cut a new one and start over!

So, as of today, the entire outer coat is sewn together.. Not bad, for basically starting with just the two front pieces and the back piece assembled.  I still have to sew the lining in, but I'm hoping to knock that out by next weekend. We'll see how it goes--I actually will have several weeknights next week with reduced teaching loads, due to vacations and whatnot, so I'll have more evening time than usual. But then, it's also my annual week of vacation from the garden center job to teach flute at the middle school band camp hosted by the local university. (I think I need to work on understanding the meaning of that "vacation" thing...) So even though I'll have the time, whether I have the energy and/or brainpower remains to be seen!

I probably could have gotten more done today. Except that the sleeves took me awhile, with all the pleating and pinning (and unpinning and re-pleating, in one case, since I pinned them inside-out! Fortunately, I realized that before I sewed it.) But look how good it looks!

And, well, I also got slightly sidetracked for a bit tonight... I was going to sew some more after dinner, but since I'd been working on it nearly non-stop since 10:30 before I stopped for dinner around 6 (except for lunch and laundry), I decided to leave it at the good stopping point of getting to the facings and linings. And I'm kind of getting in the mood to work on scrapbooky things again...

I actually did do some paper-cutting and basic page assembling about 2 weekends ago, because I was dogsitting. And this dog is the type who will drop slobbery balls right on top of your craft projects, so no way was I letting this coat anywhere near her! Besides, I still needed to trace out and alter the pattern pieces...which I did go home for several hours to do. So the scrapbooking is what I did at the house. And then, for the last couple of years, I've had a "scrapbook rewards" credit card as my one and only credit card. (No Joann's one available at the time. Or now, when I've decided to move on to something else. Somehow, my mom managed to snag one when they did have it, and gets gift cards as a result. Lucky her.) Well, I've pretty much exhausted the interesting rewards on there, and have decided to close the account once I get my new card in the mail. But first, I cashed in all the points I'd built up that I could, and got a huge package this week of stuff like paper embossing templates, alphabet stamps, embellishy things (which I very, very rarely buy) and a couple of idea books. So the bug is definitely back now.

I had the thought today while I was sewing that I should go through my paper stash and get rid of all of the stuff I'm unlikely to ever use--a lot of my paper came from people who tried scrapbooking and don't do it anymore, or those value packs of 100+ sheets that you can get sometimes at the craft stores. And while I've gotten a lot of good stuff that way for less money than I would have buying individual sheets, there's a bunch that weren't really my style. Not to mention some of the leftover paper from when I first started doing this in high school! So if I haven't used it in about 12-14 years, it's most likely not gonna happen. I've learned that when I'm actually in the mood to clean and/or organize, I'd better take advantage of it, because that doesn't happen much. So I went through all of my patterned paper, and while I didn't count individual pieces of paper, I pulled out enough to make a 2 1/2" stack according to my seam gauge. (Probably a quarter of that is pink... I had a pretty significant amount of pink stuff from the paper stacks because I don't use that very often at all-- I probably got rid of at least 2/3 of that! And most of what I kept also had a good amount of other non-pink colors in the prints.) And I went through all of my stickers, too, and pulled out a bunch of those. I hardly ever use stickers anyway-- I could probably get rid of the entire stash and not notice. But I'm not. Yet. I put a notice on Freecyle and am hoping someone is willing to take it!

Au revoir, Jane....

This is what I woke up to this morning-- a huge tear right in the middle of one of the seams on the shorts I made as part of my BurdaStyle Jane pajamas! I knew they weren't going to hold up a super-long time, because the first time I washed them, I noticed that the seams were fraying rather badly despite the pinking that I put on them. So this really isn't fixable, because it's not so much a tear as that the fabric has literally frayed down to the stitching and beyond. I'd hoped they'd make it through the summer, at least...oh well.

So I'm going to treat this as a learning experience, and this is what I'm taking from it: First, if the fabric is this easily frayable, I really need to take the time to finish the edges. (My serger was in the shop when I made these, admittedly, but some zigzagging might have helped nicely.) Also, I probably should have made this one size larger--the top fits decently, but the shorts were just a liiiiiiiiittle bit on the snug side. So I think a reprint of the pattern is in order.

Though I am a little on the low side as far as my stash of summer sleepwear goes, I'm not crushed....they were cute, but it was just fabric from my stash that, as I said before, I'm not really sure what possessed me to buy them. And, I mean, they have pink on them. So I think I can consider this a muslin and just use a better print the next time. 


In jacket-sewing news, it's progressing... I've slowed down a bit this week because of some bias tape trim issues. Namely that suedecloth makes awful bias tape. The edges just don't press under that well, and it doesn't curve all that great. I had to completely change my original sleeve embellishment idea because the fabric simply would not accommodate it. But more on that later....as of now, the front pieces and the back pieces are sewn together, but the front and back are not sewn together, and the trim is all taped onto the front and sleeves (with a water soluble tape-- not quite the same brand that Oonaballoona recommended, but this stuff will dissolve if I ever need to wash the jacket, so that's good.) So I need to stitch that down before I can go any further. I'm hoping for a really good sewing day on Saturday, so we'll see how it goes!

The BurdaStyle Book Project, part 2: Mmmmm, fabric.

I finally have the pictures to show the yummy fabric that I get to work with for this project. The fabric on the right is what BurdaStyle sent to me-- 4 yards of suedecloth from MacCulloch & Wallis. Mmmmm, European fabric. It's soooooo buttery soft that I just want to sit here and pet it. But, of course, then I'd never get the coat done! It really has the texture and weight of a real suede (albeit a really thin one), so I realized almost right away that I am most certainly going to have to line this coat, or I have no hope of getting it on over any other article of clothing with sleeves, ever. So I went to Joann's earlier this week and came home with this fabric on the left-- a lovely brocade with a background that is the perfect match of this odd shade of grey. It's kind of blueish-greyish-greenish...and let me tell you, it was a PAIN to match the thread on this! BurdaStyle actually sent me some but it was way too dark--I'm guessing a victim of computer monitor color discrepancies. So the fact that I was able to find a lining to match so perfectly at my one and only local fabric store is a minor miracle. And the fact that it's also a print makes me rather happy--it'll be a fun surprise when the coat is opened up.

I'm a little behind on my original schedule-- thanks to some ridiculous delays at the DMV, I didn't have time to cut it out on Thursday as planned. So I cut it out on Saturday. And I'm glad that I had to add my own seam allowances on this pattern, because that made it really easy to keep the pins within that. I am going to have to be super-careful on pinning and sewing this, because as you can see, this fabric is going to show everything. 

 I've worked with suedecloth before, but it's generally been more along the lines of the polyester stuff that's not really as genuinely suede-like. So, armed with my new fabric manual and some scraps, I decided that it would be best to do some testing before I work on the actual coat pieces-- I do have a decent amount left over after cutting, but I forgot to take into account that I have some trim to cut out of it still. So this was my seam-pressing experiment. The one to the right was the most successful; for this one, I pressed it from the wrong side on the lowest temp with a bit of steam and a pressing cloth. Doing it from the front makes the seam edges show too much. Not to mention iron marks.

Speaking of the trim...this was my experiment on that. I'd thought that maybe I could take advantage of the non-fraying qualities of the fabric and just leave the raw edges (the top bias strip), but I don't think it's going to work. There's too many skipped stitches, and it just looks kind of sloppy. I did more of a traditional bias tape on the bottom, with pressed-under edges, and that one both lays and looks better. The only problem: my original design plan was to use this self-fabric bias trim on both the front and the sleeves, and for the sleeves, I may have to rethink my design plan. The fabric really won't curve that much, even cut on the bias.

Hoping to start some actual sewing tomorrow afternoon!

The BurdaStyle Book Project, part 1: Testing, testing...

First of all, the disclaimer: there's going to be a lot of pieces missing as I post about this project. I can't post pictures of the sketch or the finished product for copyright reasons. But I do have permission to post pictures of the process from BurdaStyle, so here we go!

I wanted to make a muslin of the coat before I started, both to test my changes and to try out the basic construction before I cut into the yummy faux suede that they sent me to work with. (Pictures of that to come.) So I got the body of it basted together last night (ignore the unfinished dress that Donna's wearing underneath....hopefully I'll find time to actually hem that thing before July is over! And, um, ignore the fact that the pleats are facing in the same direction on both sides of the front...they're meant to pleat towards the hips on both sides. I'll fix that on the real thing.)

I'm glad that I did try it out first--while the fit of the main body is just about perfect for me with no alterations to the pattern sizing, I did make some changes to the pattern pieces in the back. And after seeing this, the main back pieces below the yoke are now altered so that they're not so wing-like.

Another change to the original pattern that I made was to add more fullness to the sleeve cap. I got some instructions on how to actually do that from this book,  and it's working out pretty well, actually. My original thought was to gather them, like it does on the original pattern, and then just have a puffier sleeve. But I recently used up a Barnes & Noble gift card on this book (partially because of this project, but I figured it would be a good overall reference to have in my tiny little sewing library), and one of the things it specifically said is that faux suede generally doesn't ease well. So I made a modification to my original idea and decided to carry the pleats into the sleeve cap instead.

This is the result, and I really love the look of it so far! The suedecloth is fairly heavy and drapey, so I'm hoping it translates into the finished design ok. I've got some ideas on how to add some support to those sleeve caps, though.

My plan is to get as much of this done as possible in the next week and a half. I have the band camp that I work at every summer starting on the 19th, which means I'm also going to have some rearranged lessons to deal with. (Along with a lot less energy and mental clarity to draw from in the evenings, I'm sure... I enjoy the camp, but by the end of the week, I generally feel very much like a zombie in need of braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.) So I'm going to be leaving to teach my one away-from-home lesson of the evening soon (more rearranged schedules...ah, summer), and am planning on stopping at Joann's on the way home to pick up some much-needed lining, as well as see if I can hunt down something that will help me position some details without pins. Then I can get all of the fabric washed tonight, cut it out either tomorrow or Thursday (pending a get-together with my best friend from high school, which we're still discussing details on), and get some actual sewing in starting on Friday!

Secrets revealed...

As several of you probably already know, BurdaStyle revealed today that they're going to be making a book! (You can read the announcement here.) It's a really great concept-- five patterns (designed by Alison Dahl Kelly, who was one of my favorite designers from her season of Project Runway, so yay!) along with instructions and ideas for how to vary the patterns.

I'm thrilled that the announcement is finally out...I may have alluded once or twice to a secret project that I'll be working on in July, and now I can say that I was selected to make one of the variations! We were asked what our preferences were out of the five types of patterns that would be created, and after being asked to do two sketches for each of two types, I get to do a variation of my first pick, which was the coat pattern. (You know me, I love my jackets and blazers!) I have my fabric, and am just waiting to get the pattern-- I think it's coming out this weekend.

I have permission from BurdaStyle to document the process on here, so that's what I'll mostly be talking about over the next couple of weeks. Though hopefully I'll have a finished project to show beforehand, since I have all but the hem done on the dress I'm working on.